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Comment by mrverify | Hacker News Reader

Your honor, can the prosecution please be compelled to demonstrate where the bitcoin physically exists? Oh on this computer? Well, the key is memorized and there are several copies saved all over the world in cloud computers. Can the prosecution show the court, physically, where in the computer the asset exists?

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> can the prosecution please be compelled to demonstrate where the bitcoin physically exists?

Is the claim that courts the world over would be stymied by the supposedly novel concept of an intangible asset?

The claim is that location of the asset is literally impossible to prove short of having the only copy of the key on a drive in possession of the prosecution. An example crypto asset, in this case, perhaps one that is less than the threshold for this law, but used in court can be easily used to show that the asset either exists in multiple places at once, or nowhere at all, and can even exist, ephemerally, in the mind of someone or multiple people.

you could probably use CRISPR to literally trans-code it into base pairs and inject it into your genome, but the cost of synthesizing the oligonucleotide might be more than the wallet holds in some cases.

How is that different from an asset in a bank account? What matters who controls the access to it.

They can compel the bank directly, no one can "force" the blockchain do to anything that's not programmed to do.

> can compel the bank directly, no one can "force" the blockchain do to anything that's not programmed to do

This doesn't work with banks outside a court's jurisdiction. That doesn't stop enforcement.

We already have tools that informally designate tainted versus untainted wallets. Incorporating that into the law wouldn't be that difficult nor, I suspect, controversial.

This is the issue though. Reserve banks doesnt want money flowing out of SA to any organisation it cannot compel.

Enter the exchange control laws from the 60s that still limit capital flow out of SA.

1m ZAR per annum per person(~70k USD) this includes things like Netflix subscriptions, Amazon orders etc.

but did stop enforcement... swiss banks were for many years never disclosing and it had stopped enforcement in many case... this only has been changed in recent years... birkenfeld disclosures led to no more american clients out of american regulation, swiss signing FACTA, similar thing.

> did stop enforcement... swiss banks were for many years never disclosing

As you say, there was a delay, not a stoppage.

no, stoppage for many century until policy change. policy remain a stoppage, just it has removed.

They cam force the those who control access to specific assets on the chain to do something in the exact same way they can force a bank to do something.

They can't compel a bank outside their jurisdiction. If your crypto is in Coinbase and you convert it to USD and then send it in to South Africa when you need to convert to the local currency & buy something, it seems like you'll be okay.

I suppose the issue will be getting you paycheck $$ from South Africa into Coinbase (or wherever)

A crypto wallet is a handful of bytes. Perhaps a string of words if you are using passphrases as mnemonics. Where does that exist? A bank or exchange does have a physical location and would exist somewhere, but a crypto wallet really has no defined location unless specifically being held in a defined place on a defined server as per business rules. Its like saying "you cannot leave South Africa because your body is worth, like, um 50,000 USD in harvested organs..."

Where does a dollar exist?

"This is a fairly recent “announcement” and many people are upset about the Reserve Bank making up seemingly hostile and uninformed rules regarding something that has no notion of borders and is practically impossible for the regulators to control in terms of owning and transferring. Something that arguably does not even exist in any one location..." So now, a memorized key or password means you are transferring "right to capital" and therefore cannot leave South Africa? I'm fairly certain that Apartheid was thoroughly shot down back in the 80s.

The law isn't new and expecting cryptocurrency to get a free pass. The guidelines for how to follow those laws make sense. If there is anything to be upset with, it is the law itself which is something that South Africans have had a long time to get changed.

It isn't clear if its illegal to use ones Single Discretionary allowance (SDA) (1m ZAR per annum) or applying for and using a Foreign investment allowance (FIA) (further 10m ZAR per annum) for crypto.

If exchange control was applied fairly as was the interpretation up until recently, then staying below those amounts in ZAR terms would be fine. However, that may not be the case any more.

We have been trying to get it changed for DECADES, there has been numerous court cases.

In the UK you can face prison time for not disclosing passwords if compelled to by the authorities. A cryptocurrency key isn't that different.

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